


Diversionary Tactics

by ArwenKenobi



Series: Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2013 [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, References of physical abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, teenaged 'romance', teenaged!John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 19:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenKenobi/pseuds/ArwenKenobi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John does not want to leave the house let alone the country.  He doesn't care what scheme his father has conjured up to get him out of the way.  His mother should never be left alone with his father for so long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diversionary Tactics

John is nearly sixteen when he's sent away to Canada. Just for the summer while his parents try and get themselves sorted. Again. John does not want to leave the house let alone the country. He doesn't care what scheme his father has conjured up to get him out of the way. His mother should never be left alone with his father for so long. John already regrets the facts that he leaves her alone enough between school and rugby. The only thing that stops his father from doing something that could kill her is the promise of a brawl with his son. John's thrown himself in front of his mother, and Harry sometimes, enough to just start a fight with his father when the occasion calls for it. He'd rather roll with the punches than make his mother have to. Or Harry for that matter but Harry ran off when she was his age. Another thing that John believes he will not be able to forgive her for.

John tries to think of ways to get arrested that won't ruin his potential chances at uni but also will disqualify him from leaving the country. He doesn't think on it quick enough. Next thing he knows he's been shipped to Aunt Enid and Uncle Andrew in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Another thing that worries him about this expedition is that this may in fact be attempt number three at his aunt and uncle trying to gain custody. Trying to convince everyone that they're a normal, happy but accident prone family is the only time that he and his father have worked together. There's no point to it now, John grumbles, he's old enough and he's been doing well enough without anyone coming in and taking him away.

Enid is his mother's younger sister and Andrew is the Canadian businessman she'd fallen in love with when John was barely out of nappies. He's seen her sporadically over his life but this is his first visit to her side of the world. Fortunately it is during the summer so he spends most of his time melting into whatever piece of furniture he's sitting on at the time due to the heat. Canada may be well known for its winters but their summer, brief as he's told they are, are hot and humid and unbearable. 

He gets plenty of attention in the neighbourhood. The fact that neighbourhood, and the subway station down the way, are called High Park does nothing to help his sense of displacement. What he calls things is funny, what the people he meets calls things is strange (pants are not trousers, for God's sake), but what really gets him the attention is his accent. John's only met a few people from outside of the Europe and most people didn't make a fuss about his accent. He doesn't recall being all too fascinated with theirs either, people sound different depending on what language they speak and where they're from after all, but everyone loved the way he sounded. Especially the girls. John hasn't had much luck in the way of girls.

The one girl who becomes his sort of girlfriend - 'summer fling' might be the appropriate term - is Desi Hammond. Desi was six months older than him and lived a quick subway ride away. Her parents divorced and her mother, whom she lived with on the weekends, lived at the end of his aunt and uncle's street. They spent every moment they had together. Desi never said why her parents divorced and she never asked why he was in Canada for the summer when it wasn't like he had cousins to play with or was interested in studying abroad. John doesn't offer any explanation or ask anything too deep like that. It's innocent, him and Desi. Both knew that he'd be gone and wouldn't be coming back in a few weeks time but they enjoy each other's company, in more ways than one. She helps him keep thoughts of England and his parents at bay. It's nice doing something for himself and it's nice not having to explain bruises and blood and exhaustion. It's nice being normal, or playing at it at least. This is only temporary.

John and Desi both lose their virginity the night before John flies back to London. When John returns he sees fresh bruises and marks on his mother and he fights his father within six hours of being home. Even jetlagged, he gives his all. After that the pair of them start trying to get him out of the house more. Trying to get him to visit Harry at uni, trying to get him out and about. Eventually John does. A girlfriend had provided a good distraction there so why not here? If the one woman he really does care about seems to be perfectly content to live like this without any help and not stand up for herself at all then who was he to wedge himself in the middle of it?

He stays in London anyway. He completes his degrees there and, though he lives away from home now, he keeps his eye on his father. Eventually his father's drinking and fighting catches up with him and he's gone. John cannot say that he mourns him but once he's gone he finds that his mother and he have very little to discuss. He's reminded at the mention of Enid and Andrew's sympathy card in the post that his mother had very much liked the sound of Desi. 

Between his years at uni and medical school he cycles through a handful of casual girlfriends and two serious ones. He only brings one of those serious girlfriends home. Then he joins the army where he reputation follows him somehow. When they call him Three Continents Watson it is because when he speaks about Canada all he mentions is Desi. Desi and the other girls he makes up or embellishes because he does not want to think about Canada and what Canada had meant. 

When he is invalided back to London he is told that his mother has died. Funeral has happened and everything. Apparently, after he spends an hour shouting with Harry, it had happened while he'd been in hospital and the doctors had forbidden him from knowing. He manages to get himself to her grave without Harry's help and does his best to both apologise and explain himself in one visit. He thinks he does well enough and he takes a special trip, aching leg and shoulder be damned, to spit on his father's grave on the way out.

He hasn't had a girlfriend in years and he is okay with that. Even now that he has nothing to fight for, nothing to worry about, and nothing to do, he is just okay with that. Maybe he's served his purpose. John's long come to the conclusion that it's his job to help others and be more useful to others than to himself and he wonder if that's all over now and if that means that he can sit in this bedsit and waste away to nothing until then.

He's alone. That's really what this is. He's alone for the first time in years. He's done his very best to never be alone, even if his company was his arsehole father and his timid and well wishing mother. He's alone. Now he has to worry about himself and he does not want to think about himself. Who and what he is as a result of all this is something he prefers to not dwell on.

John stares at the gun for another moment and shuts the drawer again. Not yet, a voice in his head. Not yet. You'll miss it all if you do it.

Decades later, when he's an old man on the Sussex Downs with his detective turned bee keeper best friend, he is incapable of expressing or even feeling how totally thankful he is for that voice and to himself for listening to it. He wouldn't have missed this for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 5: 'Three Continents Watson.': We know that two of them are Europe and Asia. But what is the third, and why was Watson there? Tell us!


End file.
